Autumn care for apple trees: before and after harvest

Harvesting

In most cases, harvesting is carried out in the fall, after the fruits have acquired all the necessary signs of ripeness:

• the acquisition by apples of the size, color and taste characteristic of the technical ripeness of the fruits of this variety;
• the appearance of episodic fall of ripened apples.

As soon as this happens, you should immediately start cleaning, otherwise the fruits will fall off and be beaten.

You need to pick apples from the branches carefully so that the fruits from neighboring branches do not crumble, then put them in specially prepared boxes. If it is not supposed to trim the upper branches, then a special device with a rosette-shaped thicket at the end of a long pole will help you get the apples from them: just place the selected apple inside, turn it slightly.

It is necessary to remove the fruits from the apple tree as carefully as possible, only specimens without mechanical damage can be stored for a long time. Otherwise, the crop will begin to rot, spreading harmful spores to neighboring fruits, and even the most careful care will not help to save the crop. It should be remembered that not all varieties can be stored, in addition, it is better to isolate each apple – shift them with paper or wood shavings.

Video “Autumn care”

From the video you will learn how to properly care for apple trees in autumn.

Top dressing and watering

After the last apple is plucked and sent for storage, you can proceed to the main steps that make up the main care for your apple trees in the fall. And this is nothing more than high-quality watering, as well as top dressing of the garden.

First of all, let’s stop on watering. It should be plentiful, and especially if there was little rain in the fall. But even heavy and prolonged rains are not always able to moisten the soil well, therefore, in preparation for winter, apple trees need to be watered.

In order to provide the trees with proper care, to help them survive the long winter period (especially when it comes to Siberia), in autumn the soil around each apple tree needs to be moistened not only at the trunk, but even around the entire perimeter of the crown.

At the same time, you need a lot of water, since you need to wet the ground to a depth of at least 1 meter. The older the apple tree, the more water it will need. For example, when caring for young seedlings under the age of five, you will need about 50 liters each, but fifteen-year-old apple trees need much larger volumes, for each such tree in the fall, in preparation for winter, you will have to pour about 150 liters. You have managed to provide optimal care if the root system of the apple tree is completely moistened, as well as the soil around it. After such manipulation, the tree will be able to gain strength so that the cold winter (in Siberia or even in the Moscow region) passes without problems, and you do not have to take extra care of your garden. In addition, sufficiently moistened soil will not allow frost to penetrate deep and damage the root system of fruit trees.

Now it’s time for feeding. After watering is done (sometimes these two stages are recommended to be combined), in the fall you can start feeding. For these purposes, mainly potash or phosphate fertilizers are used. If nutrients are applied at the same time as watering, they will reach the root system of the apple tree faster and will be instantly mastered by the tree. If, however, fertilizers are simply scattered over the surface of the soil after watering in the fall, it will take much longer to assimilate them.

To nourish fruit trees, you can use both prepared mixtures sold in specialized stores, and prepared on your own. The second option involves the purchase of components and their own mixing in the correct proportion and sequence. So, in order to provide proper care and necessary nutrition for fruit trees, you need to take 10 liters of water, 1 tablespoon of any potash fertilizer you like and 2 tablespoons of phosphorus fertilizer and mix everything well. This amount of solution will be enough for you to process 1 square meter of the garden (provided that all the trees are young, not older than 10 years). Otherwise, the processing area is halved.

In no case do not use nitrogen fertilizers in the fall. The fact is that such compounds stimulate the active development of shoots, and given that pruning is not expected in winter, they will definitely freeze.

Preparing the earth for the cold

Autumn care for the orchard also involves the obligatory digging of the soil. In Siberia, you need to do this a little earlier, as the cold comes faster. On average, gardeners do this procedure around mid-September. It is necessary to dig up a site with columnar apple trees carefully so as not to inadvertently damage the root shoots. The best thing for this is not a shovel, but an ordinary household pitchfork.

Also, do not get carried away with loosening the earth and breaking up clods; large earthen blocks better retain the moisture necessary for the tree. Tree care before winter also involves the removal of weeds, fallen fruits and foliage from under it. After all, it is all these objects that are often densely populated by pests, which in the spring will begin to attack the plant with renewed vigor. And we do not need a new intense struggle.

Barrel cleaning and sanitary pruning

The next step in the garden at your dacha is annual pruning. This procedure helps to shape the crown, regulate the growth of trees, as well as improve fruiting and fruit quality. Pruning helps to grow apple trees with a strong and powerful trunk, which does not care about heavy winds or plentiful harvests.

There are two types of sanitary pruning: shortening trees (when the upper part of the branches is removed, about half of their length) and thinning (in this case, pruning affects the side branches or even shoots completely). Sometimes the procedure needs to be repeated in the spring, if some branches are frozen, they are also ruthlessly removed.

Further care for columnar apple trees involves stripping the trunks. To do this, you need to spread a dense film under the treated tree and carefully “walk” along the trunk with a hard wooden or plastic scraper in order to completely remove all old or exfoliated bark, lichens and moss foci that have settled on the trunk. This procedure allows not only to take care of the condition of the tree trunk, but also makes it possible to destroy the likely pests lurking in such foci. However, care must be taken so that overzealous care does not turn into injuries; with active pressure, you can easily damage the delicate living tissues of the plant. This happens especially often if dry weather persists for a long time and the surface of the trunk is somewhat dry. Therefore, it is better to take care of apple trees in this way immediately after a heavy autumn rain or simply by moistening the trunk with water. After all, wet scales of the bark are much easier to clean.

In the event that the care nevertheless turned into a tree injury, do not hesitate to cover the cut with a brilliant green solution or pour plenty of hydrogen peroxide – this will protect the wound from infection or pathogenic microorganisms.

Whitewashing of trees

This is the final stage, which involves the autumn care of the orchard. It is better to whitewash the trees at the very end of autumn, when the prolonged rains have already stopped. The treatment solution can be bought at a specialized agricultural store or prepared independently. This can be done as follows: mix 2,6 kg of ordinary lime with 600 grams of blue vitriol and 250 grams of wood glue. The resulting mixture is dissolved in 10 liters of water, mixed thoroughly and allowed to brew a little. That’s all, you can start whitewashing. Of course, this is done in dry weather, since lime mortar applied to wet bark will be immediately washed away.

In the cold regions of our country, it may also be necessary to warm the trunks to protect the roots of trees from frost and small rodents. To do this, the trunks near the ground are wrapped with several layers of dense fabric, for example, burlap. The trunk wrapped in this way is carefully fixed with adhesive tape or twine, doing it in such a way that the lower edge of the fabric covers the base of the trunk near the ground itself. So you protect the tree trunk from rodents.

If all the manipulations are carried out by you in strict accordance with the instructions given, your apple orchard will easily overwinter and will surely delight you with a rich harvest of tasty and healthy apples next year.

Video “Care for a columnar apple tree”

From the video you will learn how to properly care for such a fruit tree.